


The Sound of Worlds Ending

by nwhepcat



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Alternate Canon, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-11-21
Updated: 2010-11-21
Packaged: 2017-10-17 05:09:16
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 9,910
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/173231
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nwhepcat/pseuds/nwhepcat
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Nothing is more important to Dean than family. But with Sam at Stanford and Dad pursuing a singleminded quest, Dean has no one to rely on but himself -- and then his body begins to fail him. A pre-series/S1 fic that veers from canon. Additional warnings: permanent injury, brief suicidal thoughts.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Sound of Worlds Ending

**Author's Note:**

> Written to accompany artwork by Sinnerforhire for the Supernatural Reversebang 2010.

Dean's luck runs out on the hunt for the rawhead.

No, that's not true. It ran out while Sam was still at Stanford, that time Dean fumbled the keys and dropped them next to the Impala. Or maybe it was the time he slurred his words after a few and thought _Hell, I'm not that drunk._

No. It was long before that. Dean's luck ran out the night the sky went orange and he sat huddled with his dad and his baby brother on the hood of the Impala and Mom wasn't there. He had waited for the firemen to bring her out, soot-covered and a little blistered but _okay_.

One of them came, face-blackened, wiping away gunk that flooded from his nose. Eyes red-rimmed, like Daddy's, but not crying. _I'm sorry_ , he'd said, and the sound that came out of his dad then--

Much later Dean realized it was the sound of worlds ending.

***

Dean's getting used to the shattering of worlds. The next time he had a front-row seat he was standing in a cloud of diesel fumes, watching twin red lights traveling together over a darkened road until they vanished. Taking Sam away to Normal. Sam wanted Normal more than he wanted Dean, and no matter how many times he told Dean it had nothing to do with him, he knew it did.

He stood there until the smell of diesel gave way to the overwhelming sweetness of honeysuckle, but the rumble of the bus still echoed in his head. The physical memory of Sam's fierce hug slipped away moment by moment. If he stayed there long enough, Dean wondered, would all his memories of Sam's touch disappear into smoke? The clumsy, childish hugs, the sparring and the actual fights, the awkward fumblings in the dark?

Sam had initiated those times, the (literally) undercover stuff, but Dean -- well, he could never say no for long, and it's been a long time since he wanted to.

That, Dean thought, was what Sam was trying to escape, as much as the hunter's life. But it meant escaping Dean, too.

At last Dean turns and starts back for their motel. Halfway across the bridge that leads to the edge of town with the fast food joints, used car lots, seedy motels and seedier bars, his feet get tangled up and he stumbles to his knees on the pavement. He bites his tongue when he hits the ground, and he's grateful for the taste of blood, for the sharp pain that distracts him even briefly from the hollow ache that's going to follow him forever.

***

The next time the world ends, it takes a relationship with it, barely two weeks old. The betrayal that triggers it, though, isn't Cassie's. It's his body that fails him. He has a split lip and black-and-blue cheekbone when he meets her, thanks to some rough terrain on his last hunt with Dad. Dean was damn lucky he hadn't gotten a fallen tree branch through the eye.

Dad sends him off to dispatch a ghost at Ohio University while he takes another job in Minnesota. The job's a cakewalk and Athens is full of pretty young coeds, so Dean sticks around while waiting for word back from Dad.

He meets Cassie in a restaurant called Lui Lui. It looks more upscale than anywhere he'd willingly go, and it pisses him a little that such an awesome name is wasted on a place that has a sushi night. But the prices aren't bad, and he sees a group of students in baseball caps and t-shirts going inside, so he figures he could at least have a beer without getting the bum's rush.

Settling himself, as always, at a table in the corner with a good view of the door, he fingers the hem of the white tablecloth. He's a helluva lot more used to paper placemats with word puzzles or maps of the area or the Chinese horoscope. Everyone else in the joint is with someone, or multiple someones. Dean feels decades older than anyone else in here, the way he always does around a college campus (the way he always does when checking on Sam).

"Hi," says a friendly voice at his side, and he turns to find a pretty girl in crisp white shirt and black pants has materialized at his elbow. She has gorgeous dark skin, dark eyes and a mass of curly hair. It's pulled back off her shoulders into a clip, but a few mutinous strands corkscrew by her face.

Starting to offer a menu from the two she's carrying, she asks, "Are you waiting for someone?"

 _You_ , he might say, if he were in another kind of place where lines that cheesy don't have quite as glaring a spotlight trained on them. Turning his face up to her, sketching a smile, he says, "Flying solo tonight."

"Ouch."

Dean laughs. "It's not _that_ bad."

"No, I meant --" she gestures to her own high, sculpted cheekbone.

"Oh. That." He makes a face, which actually revives the dull ache in his cheek. "It's nothing, just a hard day at the office."

Her lips quirking into a smile, she says, "I have those days when I want to smash my head into my desk, but I usually refrain. Not here, more when I'm working on a paper."

"So you're a student here."

She nods. "Journalism. How about you?"

"Uh, no. I'm in forestry." Dean gestures at his cheek. "I had a run-in with a raging spruce tree."

"Those spruces are pretty fierce in these parts." As another group of students burst into the restaurant on a gust of noise, she seems to realize she's supposed to be working. "Can I get you something to drink while you're looking over the menu?"

Dean orders a beer and watches her appreciatively as she bustles off to deliver his order and hand out menus to the newly arrived group.

He knows something out of the ordinary is going on when she talks him into trying the sushi. The place is too busy for her to stick around and talk him through it, and he prefers the familiar when he's on his own. He imagines Sammy in a place like this, hanging out with his classmates, giving the raw fish and the chopsticks a try. Sam was all about expanding Dean's tastes that last year or two after he figured out on his own there were more to discover. Thinking about Sam backfires, though. More than Dean's complete hopelessness with the chopsticks, it's this that shuts down his appetite.

When the waitress comes around again, she gives his plate and his abandoned chopsticks a rueful look. "Not your thing, huh?"

"I guess not."

"Listen, I can bring you something else."

"No, I --" It was foolish enough coming in here instead of grabbing a burger somewhere, or better, a few snacks from the mini mart. No telling how long Dad will be chasing the psycho fairies he's after, and he's got to make his cash last.

"No, seriously," she says. "I'll save the sushi rolls you didn't touch and have that for dinner. No charge for that."

He'd bail and make a dinner of Slim Jims, if it weren't for her. There's something different about her, beyond getting him to consider ordering raw fish and rice for something other than a ritual. It's in the -- well, the word makes him want to gag, but he can't think of a better one -- vibe he's getting from her. It's attraction and interest, not just straight-up hunger. He's not sure why. He orders the lasagna.

After a few visits to his table to make sure everything's okay and several more-than-glances from across the dining room, Dean realizes why the attention she's giving him is so different. It's the same kind that he's been giving her.

And after the restaurant closes at nine, Dean learns her name is Cassie, and finds himself on an actual goddamn _date_.

This is not the part with the world ending. That comes two weeks later, after he's had a good look at almost-normal. It's not because he's smashed two of Cassie's mugs and a wine glass -- not directly, at any rate.

" _Shit._ I'm sorry, Cassie," he says after the wine glass. Shards of glass glitter on the hardwood floor, red dripping off the edges of her white comforter.

"Don't get up," she orders. "I've got slippers." It shouldn't be sexy watching her stretch across the sheets and rummage under the bed below until she comes up with them. Or pulling the comforter from the bed, the white satin sliding bit by bit down his body. And he definitely shouldn't be enjoying the view down the front of Cassie's lacy tank top as she crouches to sweep the glass into a dustpan.

Returning from dumping the dustpan into the trash and stuffing the comforter into a cold bath, she perches on the edge of the bed, setting a new glass of wine on the nightstand.

Cassie takes his hand, not caressing it but _studying_ it. "How is a guy as accident-prone as you climbing trees for a living?"

 _I don't_ , he wants to say, and the impulse to tell her the truth about who he is startles him. Instead he shrugs.

"Has this been going on for very long?"

Much as he'd like to down about half the wineglass on the table, Dean resists, not sure he can trust his hand to be steady. "Nothing's going on. I get distracted and I get clumsy. That's all there is to it." He turns a suggestive smile on her. "You're damn distracting, in case you didn't know."

"I'm serious, Dean. You should go to the clinic tomorrow."

"I'm not a student. Besides, it's nothing."

Cassie insists he see someone about it, and later heads out for her shift at the restaurant, leaving him at her place with her computer and student cards. He makes himself a student ID and an insurance card, plus a few others out of sheer boredom. ("Bikini Inspector" is his personal favorite, though not likely to get him far -- he throws it in the glove box with the others for an occasional chuckle.)

The lamination's barely cooled off when he drops by the campus health clinic, fumbling them from his worn wallet. This is where his world begins to splinter, when he's sitting on a padded table trying to adjust the paper sheet the nurse gave him to cover the parts of him that the patient gown doesn't. It slips to the floor unnoticed as the clinic doctor talks about the next step. She'd like to call Dean's parents, she says, and her face goes grimmer when he tells her they're dead. Rattled, she plunges ahead. He needs tests. Blood test, spinal tap, muscle biopsy, nerve conduction study, MRI.

"This sounds serious," Dean says, which is almost ludicrous enough to make him laugh.

"It could be, yes," the doctor tells him.

He doesn't hear that much of what she says after that. She won't talk specific diseases it could be, because there's a handful. He wonders how many of them are likely to kill him or just slowly cripple him.

Well, fuck this. He's not going out that way. Not much point in sticking around for the tests, either. It doesn't much matter what flavor of shit it is that fate's handing him, when he's not sticking around long enough to eat it. He'll keep hunting and probably die bloody, but he'll go out trying to save someone.

Dean goes through the motions of making the specialist appointment through the clinic, but he knows he won't be around for it. If it weren't for Cassie, he'd pack his duffel and go now, She might have been -- well, he doesn't know if there'll ever be "the one," but she could have been home for him, a refuge between hunts. The very least he owes her is -- what? Dean will not burden her with this. She's a college girl, has her whole life ahead of her.

He's got to cut this off, cauterize the wound. It'll hurt Cassie no matter what, but if he does this right, she'll heal and move on. Someday he'll be that asshole ex, not the pathetic guy she stayed with and ruined her life.

It's so fucking easy it almost makes him laugh. As it turns out, all Dean has to do is tell her the truth about who he is, what he does. He lards his story with the tells he looks for when he thinks he's dealing with a liar, and in no time flat, he's achieved asshole ex status.

It comes pretty naturally, after all.

After Cassie gives him the bum's rush, he moves on to Wisconsin, holes up in a motel room to drink until he hears from his old man. Dad's pretty pissed that he's spent the last two weeks and change not killing anything. "You know how it's done by now, Dean. You pick up a newspaper and look for signs. You get on the goddamn internet. Were you waiting for me to hold your hand? You need me to wipe your ass for you too?"

"No, sir." _But it might come to that someday._

Dean's never going to tell him about that. He'd pack Dean off to Pastor Jim's or Bobby Singer's so fast his head would spin. Dad has no patience for a head cold, much less something like this.

***

Taking two weeks off from the hunt apparently failed some kind of test Dean hadn't known he was taking, so Dad makes him stick close. Dean doesn't mind so much, not really. It's good not to be alone, though he hides every symptom he can, and the others he manages to pass off as clumsiness. Dad rides his ass a lot.

The endless string of motel rooms depresses him so much more now that he has Cassie's sunlit room with its four-poster bed to compare them to. Some nights he wakes up confused, expecting to hear Sam's whistling breaths in the too-dry air. There's just Dad and his epic snoring, drowning out everything but loneliness.

Dean starts volunteering for library duty, combing the internet for reports of unsolved murders and disappearances, ghost stories, coming up with some jobs that earn him something almost like praise from Dad. He also spends a fair amount of time looking up his symptoms. He doesn't really get answers -- it could mean he lives a long life but walks with a cane (though in his particular circumstances, that's not going to lead to a long life) or suffocates under the weight of his own paralyzed body within a handful of years.

He comes across an essay about spoons in a drawer, something like that. Spoons equal energy, and some days the simplest act like getting up and dressed takes at least half the spoons in your drawer. Dean imagines himself telling Dad, "I don't have the spoons for a hunt tonight," and the thought pulls a laugh out of him that's so loud the librarian gives him a look.

It's not just that the idea of telling John Winchester no for any reason is completely laughable, but the image is such a domestic one for his life. He's never lived in a place that might house a silverware drawer, not since he was four. It's just not a Winchester turn of phrase. _I don't have enough bullets in my clip_ , he substitutes, and laughs again, but this time he keeps it below the _ssshhhhhh!_ threshold.

It gets bad for a while, bad enough that Dad tells him to get the hell back to the car during one hunt, searches him for a flask or stash three different times, an inspection that leaves Dean bruised.

"Goddammit, Dean, you're useless to me like this," he shouts after the latest ruthless but unproductive search. "I'm better off alone than with a worthless stoner who's gonna get me killed." Dean knows this isn't an entirely theoretical statement -- he and Sam have both heard war stories about poor sonsofbitches who got their heads blown off due to their own or someone else's being righteously fucked up on hootch or weed.

One night he overhears Dad on the phone with Bobby Singer, saying, "I don't know what the hell I'm gonna do with the kid. He's worse than he was when he was a teenager. Maybe if I brought him up to you or --" Dean can't hear Bobby's immediate response, but it's some flavor of "Hell, _i_ don't want him," because that's the last he hears of that plan.

Dean lets Dad go on thinking he's drunk or high. It's easier than admitting the weakness is inside himself, and is only going to get worse, no matter what he does.

But it doesn't. After a few hellish months of this, Dean's weakness and clumsiness subside, as if all he'd needed was enough Marine Corps discipline to set him right. He gets through whole sparring sessions without Dad yelling, "C'mon, Dean! What the fuck what _that?_ " Dad pushes him hard and Dean pushes himself harder, so fucking grateful that he can. He's heard that there's an ebb and flow to these diseases sometimes, but he ignores that for the more appealing idea that it was a passing thing, a virus of some kind that just needed to work its way out of his system.

Which is almost the exact wording his dad uses when he finally says something about the months before. Bruised and aching, they're coming off a poltergeist job, and Dad decides a suitable reward would be driving out to Cali to check on Sammy. It's August, so they're taking a northern route across the country. They're somewhere out in the Channeled Scablands west of Spokane, eating lunch in a town improbably called George, Washington. Dean's looking over the menu, idly wondering as he looks over the dinner choices how good the pie is, when Dad says, "Seems like you got whatever was bothering you out of your system."

Dean goes very still at this.

"You pulled yourself out of a nose-dive," Dad goes on. "Takes a lot of strength."

Just what the fuck is he supposed to say to this? _Thank you, sir_?  
 _I guess so, sir_? _Wait, you thought I was suffering and you waited for me to take care of it myself? You tried to palm me off onto Bobby_? He settles for a twitch of a smile. "Well, God is my copilot."

Though his eyes narrow at this, Dad doesn't react.

Dean glides his gaze down, back to the menu. "Lasagna sounds good." Too late, he remembers it's what he had the night he met Cassie, after the sushi experiment. Funny, he feels alone the same way he had that night, even with Dad sitting here across from him. Lasagna's one of his comfort foods, he guesses. It fills up one kind of empty space, even if it can't fix the other.

Two weeks later, apparently having decided Dean's trustworthy on his own again, Dad hands Dean an assignment in New Orleans and hits the road for California.

And then Dad drops off the face of the earth.

***

Dean doesn't worry for the first week, but halfway into the second he feels the tug of apprehension. Dad had said he'd stay in touch, had told Dean to do the same. When he finishes the New Orleans job and heads north to check out an angry spirit in Tennessee, he leaves Dad a message to check in, but there's only resounding silence from Dad's end.

A week later, it's more than apprehension. Dean considers calling around to Bobby, to Caleb and Pastor Jim, to see if any of them has heard anything, but Dad hadn't been talking to any of them. It seemed like they'd had some kind of mysterious falling-out when Dean wasn't watching. They'd even passed through South Dakota recently without a word to Bobby Singer.

 _Estranged_ , like the newspapers call it.

That's his family story. Strange and estranged.

Then he gets the voice mail from his dad, three weeks from the time he disappeared. Faint, broken up by static which is not really static. He does everything he can to separate out Dad's voice from the noise and boost them both.

There's the spirit -- or whatever. _I can never go home._

And then there's Dad. _Something big is starting to happen... We're all in danger._

Fuck it. He's going out to Cali to find Dad. And dammit, he's getting Sammy to come along, even if he has to drag him by the scruff of his neck.

***

There's a warning signal as he climbs into the window of Sam's apartment in Palo Alto, a tremor in his arms as he hoists himself up to the windowsill. Dean knows it's a warning signal, but he pushes it far to the back of his brain.

He raises a little racket moving around the darkened apartment, but that's nothing to be concerned about. Unfamiliar territory, that's all. The noise brings Sam out of his bedroom, all householder defending his domain. Dean lets Sam think he's a burglar, curious about his instincts and reflexes after four years as a college boy.

Not bad, as it turns out, and fuck, he seems bigger now, too. Dean isn't about to tell him either of those things.

Once Sam hauls him up, they look at one another in the faint glow of a street lamp shining in through gauzy curtains. A tension thrums through Sam that Dean can't quite trace to its source. Doesn't take long before that question is answered. The lights flick on, and once Dean's eyes adapt, there's a very spectacular babe standing at the edge of the room, blonde hair tumbling around her shoulders. Like that painting of the naked chick on the clamshell. Not naked, not this one, but close enough. _Venus in a Smurf Shirt_. Though it's a dick move to leer at his brother's girlfriend, he can't quite stop himself.

It doesn't take a psychic to know Sam's reluctant to introduce them, and when Dean tries to pull him away to talk family business, instead Sam curls a protective arm around her shoulders. "No. Whatever you want to say, you can say it in front of her."

Dean blinks. That's a surprise. Has he told her about himself, or is he just trusting that Dean's training, _Never tell outsiders_ , is so strong he won't spill any secrets? It throws him off, this clear signal that they're more than a casual hookup, that they're _together_. This is what Sam left Dad and Dean for. What Dean thought he could maybe have, back during that brief time with Cassie.

"Um. Dad hasn't been home in a few days."

Sam chalks it up to a bender -- at least he's told Jessica that much about their family. The disloyalty stings.

Dean makes his face carefully blank. "Dad's on a hunting trip. And he hasn't been home in a few days."

That breaks him away from Jess, at any rate. He shoves his feet into a pair of boots and heads down to the street with Dean. A few details, and Dean can actually see Sam's brain starting to whirr with a problem to be solved -- just like when he was a kid, he loves this shit.

"All right. I'll go. I'll help you find him."

Despite the familiarity of being in the Impala with Sam, it's entirely different. They've never been on their own like this, hunting without Dad. And though Dean has had his moments of thinking Sam's a total freak, he's never felt like Sam's a stranger before now.

"You hit the bars tonight instead of the books?" There's no mistaking the smell of stale beer that lingers on Sam's clothes, and that seriously shaggy hair.

"For a while," Sam says. "Halloween party."

Dean grunts. "What did you go as? Vengeful spirit? Wampus cat?"

"I didn't go as anything, Dean. Just myself. I wore what I usually do."

"I hope you had your face in a book, or nobody would have guessed it."

"Funny," Sam mutters, shifting his long legs in the passenger seat. "I'm gonna try to cop some Zs. Tell me when we're there."

Halloween. Yeah. That's what Dean's got next to him. Some stranger dressed as Sammy.

***

Then they're on this bridge, and even as he slams Sam back against a girder, he can feel the grip of his right hand loosening. Everyone slips through his grasp: Mom, Dad, Sam, Cassie....

Before Sam can wrench himself away, they're both distracted by a woman in a white nightgown, standing on the railing of the bridge. She catches their eye, then does her swandive off the bridge. They run to see where she landed, but can't see a thing.

The sudden glare of headlights doesn't do much for that. Turning, Dean throws up an arm to shield his eyes, but he doesn't need to see what's coming. He'd know the rumble of his beloved Impala anywhere. When he and Sam turn and run, he takes four long strides before his leg gives way, dumping him on the asphalt and gravel.

"Dean!" Sam shouts.

"Go!"

Ignoring the order, Sam runs back and catches him up as Dean's car bears down on them. Hauling him up by a fistful of jacket, Sam pushes him over the bridge railing, then scrambles over it himself, and they drop like stones into the muddy waters below.

***

After their Butch and Sundance act, Sam and Dean stand by the Impala's trunk, wiping themselves down with threadbare towels stolen from some long-ago motel.

"Man, I smell rank," Sam complains. "I don't think I wanna know what kind of runoff is flowing into that water."

Dean bundles their sodden clothes into a garbage bag. "We'll hit a laundromat if there's time." After they find Dad, he doesn't say.

"So what happened back there?" Sam asks as he pulls on a fresh t-shirt.

"I wrenched my knee," Dean says. "Stepped on a rock or something, and that was that."

"I want to take a look at that."

"Later. When my balls aren't halfway frozen off."

He hoped when he said it that Sam would forget, but Sam never forgets. Surprising that four years apart was enough to erase this fact from Dean's brain. Since he was four, Sam has never forgotten a random fact, a promise, a betrayal, a fight or a rare day of fun completely apart from killing evil shit. Of course he'd remember.

They've taken turns showering, scrubbing off the vile river mud. By the time Dean emerges from the bathroom, Sam has the med kit from the Impala opened out on the rickety wooden table in the room. "I want to get some antiseptic on those scrapes. God only knows what's in that water."

Muttering, Dean submits to his attentions, offering his hands and the elbow he'd torn up when he fell on the bridge. Once he's satisfied, Sam leans back in the creaky wooden chair. "Which knee?"

 _Shit._ Resigned, he offers his right leg.

Sam hasn't forgotten this, either. The jolt of electricity, of completely wrong attraction. Dean knows it by the way Sam's hand stills suddenly in the midst of his gentle probing of Dean's leg.

Dean feels it too, fuck yes, he feels it. Desperately, he offers a distraction. "Shit, Sammy, when did your hands get so huge? You could palm a fucking beach ball with those mitts."

A small muscle pulses in Sam's jaw as he resumes probing Dean's knee. After a moment, he lifts them away and scoots back his chair with a screech. "Doesn't seem like you did any damage when you wrenched it, or when you fell."

"Yeah, it feels better than I expected."

Sam launches himself out of the chair and pulls on his coat. "I'm going to step outside and call Jess."

***

It surprises him later how much strength he has when he needs it. He sits in the Impala staring at the apartment house Sam's disappeared into, still seeing his impossibly large frame silhouetted against the building like a retinal afterimage. He's shaken Dean off with barely a backward look, gone back to the life he always wanted. Law school. Well, that figures. The two things Sammy loved most in the world from the time he was barely old enough to wipe his own nose were knowing things and arguing. He's found the perfect profession.

Shaking his head, Dean pulls away from the curb. Not two blocks from Sam's place, the tape deck starts cutting in and out, static drowning out the guitar riff. Dean doesn't hesitate. A perfect bootlegger turn gets him aimed back toward Sammy's. He takes the stairs two at a time, shoulders open the apartment door and manhandles six-foot-five of struggling little brother away from the flashover.

It shocks Dean that the strength he's felt slipping away all weekend has come roaring back to his muscles like a freight train. He'd thank God for it, if he had even a nodding acquaintance with Him.

When the adrenaline rush subsides, Dean's muscles ache and quiver. He forces himself to stay at Sam's side as a stream of jocks and tear-streaked college girls in pajamas offer Sam comfort, shared grief or a place to stay.

"Aw, Sam," says a guy named Brady. He paws Sam on the shoulder, draws him into a sloppy guy-hug. Dean loathes him on sight.

Finally Brady lets him go, all but the paw. "There's nothing more you can do here, Sam. Come back to my place. You can stay as long as you need to."

"He's got a place," Dean interjects.

Brady notices him for the first time, his inquisitive gaze an offense to Dean.

Backing off a pace from Brady, he moves closer to Dean. He mops his face with the tail of his t-shirt, then says, "This is my brother Dean. Dean, this is Brady, one of my good friends."

Yeah, he kinda gets that. It might have been Brady getting close enough to hug him, where after four years Dean got tackled to the floor. With a curt nod to to Sam's good friend, he tells Sam, "He's right about one thing. There's probably nothing more we can do here. I'll go talk to the cops, see if there's anything more they need from us right now."

To his surprise, Sam's alone when Dean returns to the Impala. There are still tear tracks in his smoke-smudged face, but they're dry now. His face is set in the patented Sam Winchester stubborn look that Dean remembers all too well.

Sam loads the shotgun he's holding, sets it back in the trunk. "We've got work to do."

***

Dean wakes up some nights to Sam's weeping in his sleep. It's not a noise, exactly. Sam and Dean both learned to cry soundlessly from an early age, a Winchester skill that came even before shooting and hand-to-hand. It's a change in the sound of Sam's breathing that brings Dean instantly awake, just as it had when they were kids.

"Sammy?" Dean whispers, but Sam's asleep, deep in the grip of a grief-struck dream. All Dean can think to do is what he did when they were young. Slipping out of his own bed, he climbs into Sam's, curling in behind him. "It's okay, Sammy," he whispers, staying until the dawn light creeps in and Sam begins to emerge from the depths of sleep.

Awake, Sam's a different man. Stubborn, single-minded, curled in on his grief and looking for vengeance.

He's Dad.

Every job seems to come with an argument. Dean wants to follow the path Dad's left for them, but knows he needs to save the people in danger from wendigos and vengeful spirits and demons. Sam wants to find the thing that killed Jess.

In a way, Dean's grateful for the discord between them. It gives Sam backbone, and seems to keep him from noticing Dean's stumbles and struggles with the simplest things.

He hasn't really let himself notice that Sam's hiding something, not until the motel room where they're looking for a new job, and Sam draws a picture of a tree _(I used to climb on that tree, with a boost from Dad to get me to the first branch)_ and says he's been having dreams and the things in the dreams come true. Bad things. Fire and blood and loss.

Returning to Lawrence unsettles Dean, and finding out about the psychic shit rattles him worse. How does he know Sam isn't going to dream about Dean some night, find out what Dean's been trying so hard to conceal? And by the time they get Missouri Mosely into the equation, Dean's feeling like a cat in a roomful of rocking chairs. _She fucking reads his mind._

"Dean," Missouri says before he can settle onto the sofa with Sam. "I could use a little help in the kitchen. I'm going to make some tea."

"You, uh, read tea leaves?"

She smiles. "No, I like tea."

He follows her down a narrow hallway that leads back to the kitchen, feeling like some force has suddenly set those rockers going.

 _Think about something else. Think about anything else. The last really awesome piece of cherry pie he had, somewhere back in Wisconsin. So fucking good, with that tartness, exactly the way he likes it, with just enough sweetness so that it's not like slugging down unsweetened cranberry juice just after brushing your teeth. And the waitress, dear god, so much sweeter than the pie, the things she did to him, with him, it was like_ she _was a mind reader and oh, fuck --_

Missouri, who's removing a rattling kettle off the stovetop, gives him a sidelong glower.

"Sorry," Dean stammers. "That got a little Skinemax."

Ignoring this, pours steaming water from a kettle into the teapot on the counter, then stirs it around and sets the lid on with a clink of china. She sets it on a tray already outfitted with three cups and saucers. Considering they just rang her doorbell two minutes ago, this weirds him out.

Thrusting the tray toward Dean, she says in her honeysuckle accent, "Take this out there, won't you?"

The second he takes it, he knows he can't support its weight. Before a warning or curse can emerge from his lips, Missouri lifts both hands up to steady the bottom of the tray, then curls a hand around Dean's shaking one to guide the tray back onto the counter.

She puts her hand to his cheek, locking her gaze onto his. "Oh honey," she breathes, and it sounds like something she might say to Sam, not to him. "Maybe if you found out for sure, you wouldn't be so scared."

"No," he says, unsteadily and too loud. "I can't do that."

"And you won't tell him."

"Not until I have to. Not one minute before."

"Dean," she says, still in that voice.

"Look, he's got enough to deal with. He's lost the life he wanted and the girl he loved. I'm not gonna dump my shit on top of him."

"You damn Winchester men," she says mildly, without heat. "I've never known such stubborn creatures as you three." She picks the tray up and carries it out to the other room as if that was her intent all along.

***

There's a bad stretch there, after Kansas. It's all Dean can do to get out of bed. Spoons, bullets, he's out of everything. "I think I'm coming down with something," he tells Sam, wondering how long he can get away with that story.

The second morning he says it, over red flannel hash at a diner of dubious sanitary conditions, Sam says, "Maybe we should find a doc-in-the-box."

"For what? They won't know anything until it's in full bloom. Let's just lay low another day, see if it passes. You can hit the library and see if there are any jobs around here. I'll burrow in, drink some of that nasty Airborne shit, try to sleep it off. Chances are I'll be better tomorrow." He hopes so. He's never had a chance to test that method, not during his months with Dad.

"I thought you were in such a tear-ass hurry to find Dad."

Dean fumbles the fork, sending it clattering onto his plate and onto the sticky tabletop. "Fine. Whatever. You want to leave right now? Let's go." He scoots to the end of the booth, reaches up and grabs the coat hook on the end of the seat back, ready to lever himself up.

"Sorry," Sam says. "Forget it."

They finish their breakfast in silence, then Sam leaves him at the motel to fumble his way into the room and crash.

 _Maybe if you found out for sure, you wouldn't be so scared._

He doesn't want to find out for sure, because he knows he's dying.

***

 _That's the difference between you and me. I have a mind of my own. I'm not pathetic like you._

Sammy might say he didn't mean the shit he said after Dr. Ellicott whammied him, but Dean knows otherwise. It echoes in his head after he leaves Sam by the side of the road so he can head off to Sacramento against Dad's orders.

 _I'm not pathetic like you._

Funny how a monster can throw you across a room or slash you open but still the most hurtful shit it can do to you is reveal the true feelings of the people you love.

Yeah, funny. Like staggering and sprawling on his face was funny when Sam assumed it was due to Dean's slit-eyed, hungover haze. It'll be hilarious as hell when Dean's ass is in a wheelchair.

Yeah well, maybe he'll put a bullet in his brain before he gets to that point. He'll be nothing but a drag on Sam, on Dad. Even in his sorry state, he should have enough bullets for that job. Only takes one.

He tucks that thought away for later, another weapon in the arsenal that he can break out of the trunk when he needs to.

 _Pathetic like you._

He hates being alone, always has. Some tough guy he is.

Dean's tied up, the scarecrow about to sing "Don't Sit Under the Apple Tree with Anybody Else But Me" when Sammy shows up, and Dean doesn't think he's ever been so glad to see his little brother. And when Sam refuses Dean's offer to drop him off somewhere, joy and relief surges through him.

 _You and me. We're all that's left. So, if we're gonna see this through, we're gonna do it together._

 _Thank the baby Jesus, YES._ Dean buries it under snark, because that's how it's done. "Hold me, Sam. That was beautiful."

Sam bats his hand away, laughing, and Dean laughs too. One thing is right in this world, anyway. And it's the only thing that matters.

***

Dean's luck -- such as it is -- runs out on the hunt for the rawhead.

He's felt a lot more like himself the last couple of weeks, so it's not the weakness that fucks him over. A rotten wooden stair in the basement of an abandoned house gives way beneath him, and the rawhead grabs him up before he can even think of moving. Pain whites out his vision even before he slams into a wall and lands in several inches of filthy water.

Then there's pain, wet, cold, flash, bellow, smell of cooking foul meat.

"Dean!" Splashing to his knees beside Dean, Sam goes straight into trauma medicine mode. His huge hands frame his face. Dean hears Dad's voice echoing in his head, all that trauma training. _Hold the C-spine._

"Oh shit, Sammy," he whispers.

Sam's whipcrack-fast assessment has him reaching for his phone. "Fuck. No signal ... here. I'm ... 911, and I'll be...."

Dean wants to tell him his voice is cutting out, but he can't form words.

" _Hold on_ ," Sam yells from the stairs.

Dean fades out, and when he's next aware, he's in motion -- yet he's strapped down, unable to move. Strangers in dark blue shirts are hovering over him. A siren wails, keeping pace with him. Okay. Ambo.

"Sammy?" He can't see anything but the EMTs and the ceiling of the ambulance.

"I'm right here, Dean. Can you feel me?"

 _I don't feel a damn thing._

"What happened?"

"You fell through some stairs."

He doesn't remember.

"Try to take it easy, Dean. You're gonna be okay."

Darkness overtakes him like the tide, and when it recedes, he's in an ambulance. "Sammy?"

"I'm still here, Dean. You're okay. We're almost there."

He cuts his eyes toward the voice, but can't see Sam. He's strapped down, his neck immobilized. "What happened?"

"You fell. You're okay, though. You're going to be fine."

The tide takes him. When he next bobs up again, there's rough movement, a blaze of lights. Voices, too sharp, too many at once. "Dad? Dad!"

"I'm here," says a voice, not Dad's. "It's Sam. You're at the hospital now. You're gonna be all right."

Voices are talking at him, but he's not following. The tide is lapping at him. He sees a nurse jab a needle into his IV line, and then he's pushed under the surface.

***

Like a shipwreck survivor waiting for rescue, he endures a series of waves -- first he's submerged, then tossed upward into bright light, but drawn under again before he can get his bearings, or hear more than fragmented conversations.

When he emerges fully, he finds himself lying at the base of some complicated rig, and he wonders if he's been hauled up by some commercial fisherman's net. But instead of sky overhead there's a ceiling of white tiles pierced by hundreds of holes.

"Sammy?" Dean's mouth and throat are so parched it's painful to say his name.

"Hey," he says softly. "I'm right here." He leans into Dean's view, puts a hand on his arm.

"What happened?"

"You fell. Do you remember where we were?"

"Kansas. Poltergeist. Mom. She was on fire."

Sam's huge hands close around one of his. "Her spirit, yeah. She saved us. But we had another job after we went home. That's where you fell. You don't remember?"

"No. Fuck, Sammy, I'm thirsty." Before he can ask, Sam has reached somewhere out of Dean's view and retrieved a plastic cup with a bendy straw. "Where the hell am I?" he asks, once he's had a couple of sips.

"You're in the hospital."

Flicking a glance up at the rig above him, Dean asks, "What's this?"

"That's helping stabilize your spine."

Dean takes in the pinched look around Sam's mouth and eyes and the slept-in state of his clothes. He looks wrecked. "I jacked up my spine?"

"You fell," Sam says again. "We went after a rawhead, and you fell through a rotten stair step. Then the rawhead got to you."

"Where's Dad?"

A pause, while Sam does that thing with his lips that he's always done when there's something he doesn't want to tell, ever since he could talk. "I don't know."

"He wasn't there?"

"No, Dean. We heard from him, but we haven't seen him." His face looks like it wants to crumple.

"I'm sorry I don't remember. I can tell it's freaking you out."

Trying for a smile, Sam says, "You apologizing freaks me out worse. The memory loss is normal, due to the accident. Plus you're on some heavy duty meds. They think you might remember more later."

"Dad's coming?"

"I hope so, Dean. I let him know."

It's hard to focus on what he's saying. Sammy squeezes his arm gently and tells him to get some rest. "I'll be right here."

Dean lets himself drift, knowing he's tethered by Sam's hand on him.

***

He emerges again, staring up at the weird, negative-image sky. Black stars on white. Must be millions of them. As he tries to unstick his tongue from the roof of his mouth, it makes a small sound, and in an instant, Sammy is there with the water cup.

"You're still here," Dean says once he's had a sip.

"Of course I am. I told you I would be."

His gaze slides away from Sam's face, to the rig above his bed. "I heard you talk about going to Stanford."

Sam's breath puffs against his face in a soundless, humorless laugh. "Out of everything that went on around you, that's the one thing you remember? I was talking to the doctors about _taking_ you to Stanford. There's a world-class trauma center there."

"So we're there?"

"No. We thought it was best to get you somewhere closer."

Dean fights the pull of drugs and sleep. " _We_? Dad came?"

The sound of Sam swallowing seem louder than a shout. "I'm sorry, Dean. He hasn't been in touch. He's gone after that demon, and..."

Dean doesn't need to hear more. He loosens his grip on the bright world of his hospital room, drifting into darkness.

***

He shoots up to the surface again, rocketing like a hollow ball held under the water and suddenly released. It's pain that hurls him into consciousness. When he tries to shift to a better position, nothing happens.

" _Sam?_ He can hear the panic in his hoarse near-shout.

"Right here, Dean." Putting himself in Dean's line of vision, Sam takes his head.

"Jesus, Sam, it hurts. What's going on?"

Sam leans across the hospital bed, presses an object into his palm. "You have a pump for when the pain gets bad." He curves Dean's hand around the pump, positions his thumb on a button. "Just press it whenever you need to."

Thumbing the button, Dean lets out a long, shaky breath as the heavy relief begins spreading through him. "How bad is it?"

"I should get your doctor."

Panic tries to fight its way past the syrupy feeling in his veins. "I didn't fucking ask for a doctor. I want it from you. It's not like you aren't an obsessive note-taker. Tell me the damage."

Sam's mouth does that thing again, the _don't make me tell_ suppressed twitch. "They aren't sure yet. It often takes a while before the --"

Wishing he hadn't hit the monkey pellet button, Dean fights to focus. "Fuck the disclaimers. I don't have time for that. How fucked up am I?"

Sam sucks in a breath and lets it out. "There's damage to your spinal cord. The injury, and then the swelling, which they're getting under control."

"Spinal cord." His tongue is getting thick now. " _Fuck me_ , are you saying I'm paralyzed?" Before Sam can answer, Dean starts to laugh, deep, wracking laughter that turns to coughs and muffled explosions of pain.

Here he's been afraid of winding up like Stephen Fucking Hawking due to some fucking disease, and now he's going to be piloting a wheelchair anyway. _Jesus fuck._

"Dean. _Dean._ What the hell?"

He feels the undertow tugging at him, and he doesn't fight it. "Man, Sammy," he says thickly. "If there is a god, he is one malignant bastard."

***

Eventually he does get it from the doctor. There's still a lot of _well, we don't really know_ , and a lot Dean misses once Sam starts in with the _lookit me, I know Latin and spent an afternoon on the internet_ , so the doctor starts addressing him.

Highlights:

• Yeah, he's paralyzed. How much they won't know for sure until they know.

• He's lucky. It's an L3, his lower back on down, so important functions like breathing and speaking are unaffected, and Dean will probably regain other functions with some training.

"So it's just pissing and shitting I can't do alone," Dean says. He has to work to get his voice past the tightness in his throat. "And fucking's out altogether. That's awesome. I'm damn lucky."

"You are damn lucky." There's a surprising amount of heat in Sam's tone. "You're not dead. They'll teach you a lot in rehab and soon you'll be pissing and shitting and fucking to your heart's content."

"Don't you fucking lie to me, Sam."

"He's telling the truth," the doctor says. "You can learn to compensate for the functions that are compromised, if you're motivated enough."

The doctor's tone pisses him off, but a fierce glare from Sam prevents Dean from commenting.

"A great many incomplete L3 paraplegics manage to walk with assistance," the doctor says, "though there's a price paid in energy. You'll still need the wheelchair much of the time."

"Dandy. So I'll be able to take my walk down the runway when I win Miss Spinal Fracture America, or stand up and salute my old man whenever he feels like he can move his sorry ass to see his son."

Sam gives him a startled look. Whether it's due to Dean's airing his bitterness with strangers or criticizing their father at all, Dean's not sure. The doctor's response is

• "Of course, group and individual counseling is offered in conjunction with physical rehab, and we encourage you to avail yourself of this."

Oh, and one last highlight:

• There are some findings on the initial tests that are anomalous. The doctor wants to run more tests to see what's skewing the results.

Hell, might as well go the full monty now. He's already fucked, might as well have the maraschino cherry on top. "Sure," Dean says. "Test away."

***

Predictably, Sam is pissed when the tests reveal Dean's little secret. His pen still skips across the pages of his DEAN'S MEDICAL FUBAR notebook as the doctor offers details and the inevitable _we don't really knows_ , but Dean can see the signs of an explosion building. As soon as the doctor leaves the room, there's going to be a classic Sam Winchester hissy fit.

It's MS, the doctor tells them; the relapsing-remitting flavor. There's no telling exactly how the disease will progress under more usual conditions, much less in light of Dean's incomplete L3 injury. No cure for either of his conditions, but there are therapies and coping strategies....

 _Just like being a Winchester. No cure for that, that's for damn sure._

Sam's still scrawling notes, so Dean lets his mind drift. By the time the doctor's gone and Sam's ready for his blowup, it's clear he doesn't know whether to yell at Dean first about his disengagement or keeping his symptoms to himself.

 _Slap!_ The notebook's slammed onto Dean's bedside table as Sam gathers himself up to loom over him. "Goddammit, Dean. Why the hell didn't you say something before this?"

"Sammy, I'm tired."

"You're lying in bed. _Why?_ "

Letting out a long breath, Dean says, "You have enough problems. I didn't want to add mine."

Sam rubs a hand over his face. "That is the single stupidest thing you've ever said. Do you think it's just gonna go away?"

 _No. I think you will._ Dean doesn't say it, but Sam has no trouble reading the silence.

"Really?" Sam's voice is low and quiet. "You really fucking think I'd just walk away?"

 _You did before._ But Dean doesn't say that, either. "You've got your life. You fought hard for it. Why should you throw it away for me?"

"Jesus." Abruptly, Sam bats the empty plastic water cup off Dean's table. It somersaults across the floor and rolls against the baseboard. "Jesus. I know for a fact if it was me in that bed, you'd be here, no question. Why is it so damn hard to believe I'd do the same for you?"

"You don't have to."

"I fucking want to, all right?"

Though he's already drawn in a breath for a retort, this shuts Dean up.

***

Sammy's talking about the future, eating steamed dumplings from a take-out box with chopsticks. _I called it_ , Dean had thought when he first produced them. _I knew he'd know how to use those damn things._

His own container of dumplings -- his are fried -- sits untouched on his table. It's been a rough day, pain sizzling and snapping along his synapses.

Sammy's been talking about the transfer to the rehab center and the rehab itself like it's some kind of vacation. They've got this, and they've got that, and Rochester, Minnesota is the vacation hotspot of the universe.

"It's only a hundred miles from Blue Earth," Sam informs him, like Dean hasn't driven through Minnesota half a million times in his life.

"Is Dad coming?" They're already talking about springing him -- or more accurately, remanding him to the custody of a rehab center -- and Dad hasn't been to see him once.

Brow furrowing, Sam shakes his head. "He's getting close to the demon, Dean. He can't stop now, and even if he wanted to, he's afraid he'd bring it all down on you, on the both of us."

"And you're okay with this?"

"Why not? It's been my whole life, Dean."

Dean shifts his position, settles back into a new, slightly less painful arrangement. ""Not your whole life."

Though Sam's been tweezing the dumplings between his chopsticks, this last one he spears, scowling. "This fucking demon killed Mom, and I'm pretty damn sure it's the one who killed Jess. If he backs off now, it could be another twenty years." He crams the dumpling into his mouth, talking around it. "He calls once or twice a week to see how you are, Dean. He's doing what he can."

Yeah, and ain't that the story of Dean's life.

***

The second time Sam brings up Blue Earth and how damn conveniently close it is, Dean erupts.

"Just dump me the fuck off at Pastor Jim's because I'm too inconvenient. Congratulations, Sammy, you're a true Winchester. Now get the fuck out and leave me alone."

The look of startlement and shock on Sam's face is almost comical. "I'm not planning to palm you off on Pastor Jim. Jesus, Dean. I thought it would be easy for him to visit. Or we could go out there some weekend, once you're up for that. If anything, I thought you might reach a point where you'd want a couple of days without _me_."

Which shows what Sam knows. There are plenty of times when Dean wants to kill him, but never a moment when Dean wants to be apart from him.

***

Dean moves around the room in his hospital-issued wheelchair, gathering his things for Sam, who's perched on the bed, to pack.

"It's gonna be weeks more at rehab." Handing him a stack of sweatpants and t-shirts, Dean asks, "Don't you wish you could be with Dad, going after this thing?"

"I wish I could be with my family," Sam responds. "Oh wait -- I already am."

"But Dad --"

Sam cuts him off. "Let me think. Fed me breakfast, lunch and dinner, put me to bed, bandaged my scraped knees, taught me how to ride a bike, told me about sex -- scarred me for life, incidentally -- yep, that's all you. Saw me off to college, stood by me at Jess's funeral...." He swallows audibly. "All you. You're my family, Dean. Why would I throw that away to chase a demon?"

"The mission --"

"Comes first, right. It's the one thing that comes before family, according to Dad's way of thinking. But since when have I ever agreed with Dad?"

Since when has Dean ever not agreed with Dad?

Since now, it seems.

***

As the time for the transfer draws closer, Dean finds himself oddly depressed. Much as he wants to make the trip with Sam in the Impala, he's stuck instead with the back of an ambulette. When they bundle him onto the stretcher for the trip, it feels like he's leaving this place no better off than when he came in. The feeling eases a few degrees when they raise the back of the stretcher so he's sitting, legs extended.

As he finishes strapping Dean in, the attendant asks, "You comfortable?"

"Just give me a beer and I could be in a motel room checking out the pay-per-view," Dean says.

The man chuckles, "Let's not get that comfortable, all right?"

"Don't worry, the reason I'm going to rehab is to learn how to make gettin' a grip on my dick worthwhile."

It startles him when they roll him toward the main entrance to find a throng of staff and a few patients mobile enough to leave their rooms waiting to see him off. He high fives the 14-year-old who overturned his ATV and the 10-year-old who got her spine crushed by a hit-and-run driver.

With the life he's led, he's never been at the center of a group of well-wishers before, nothing like this. It makes gooseflesh rise on his arms, and he hopes he makes it to the ambulette before he starts crying like a girl. He glances around for Sam, but he's nowhere in sight. _God, now what, he's sprinted back inside to drain his pea-sized bladder?_ Dean doesn't want to get bundled in for a seven-hour drive without seeing Sam.

"How ya doing?" the attendant asks once they're clear of the farewell committee. His name's Oliver -- Dean didn't even know there was anyone out there still naming their kids that, even thirty years ago.

"A little bit worn out," Dean admits. He's not sure just when he'd dropped the macho shit, but he'd found it went a lot better in PT when he wasn't trying to show off his big cast-iron balls.

"Once we get you loaded, I can lower the head of the stretcher and you can catch some sleep."

"You're not getting me loaded just so you can stick your hand in my panties, are you? Because that's just not cool."

Again Oliver laughs, a low rumble that's matched and then drowned out by the throaty purr of the Impala's engine. Sam pulls the car up to the curb behind the ambulette, and Oliver moves Dean toward it, not the hospital transport. "Your brother thought you might like to have a look at your car before we head off."

Sam emerges from the driver's seat, letting the Impala idle as he comes around to the other side. Dean's hand trembles slightly as he reaches out to stroke her gleaming black skin, feel the hum of her engine through his fingers and palm. She's gleaming like newly shined shoes, though Dean can see from a water spot on the chrome door handle that Sam must have run her through a touchless automatic carwash. He's barely been away from Dean long enough to sleep and to slog through paperwork since the accident.

"I missed you, baby," he murmurs. And as soon as he has the strength, Dean will do a thorough wash and wax and buff on her. He looks up at his brother. "Thanks, Sammy. She looks awesome."

Sam slips a hand in his pocket and produces a cell phone. "Here's your phone, all charged up." His hand lingers around Dean's for a moment, warm and dry. "Guess we're ready to roll, huh?"

Oliver and the ambulette driver, who's joined them to admire the Impala, nod and get Dean's stretcher hoisted into the transport and locked into place.

Framed by the ambulette doors, Sam raises a hand. "See you on the other end."

"Yeah," Dean says, and for what seems like the first time, he knows that he will.

**Author's Note:**

> This fic is a bit outside my comfort zone in terms of time to do the research I wanted, or to flesh out scenes, because of my own and [](http://community.livejournal.com/spn_reversebang/profile)[**spn_reversebang**](http://community.livejournal.com/spn_reversebang/)'s time limitations. But I can see this being a 'verse I can come back to, both to extend the story and to expand and explore scenes and themes touched on here. Thanks to [](http://nestdweller.livejournal.com/profile)[**nestdweller**](http://nestdweller.livejournal.com/) and Me_Nevermind for the fast betas; and [](http://sinnerforhire.livejournal.com/profile)[**sinnerforhire**](http://sinnerforhire.livejournal.com/) for her art and the opportunity to ramble about the fic in progress. Any errors are solely mine.


End file.
